1. Technical Field
Example embodiments of the present invention relate in general to a mash-up service generation apparatus and method and more specifically to a mash-up service generation apparatus and method based on a voice command.
2. Related Art
Generally, mash-up denotes combining and applying various types of contents or services to generate new contents or services. Here, the various types of contents or services may be configured with a program module called a block. The mash-up denotes a web-based data integration application, and may be generated using a mash-up authoring tool that connects or combines a plurality of the above-described blocks. As a detailed example of the mash-up, there is an application in which a map service of Daum is combined with a photograph service of Naver. When a user clicks a specific position of a map with a mouse, the above-described mash-up allows photographs associated with the clicked position to be displayed on the map.
Here, in a general mash-up working process, a mash-up developer designs a kind of mash-up to produce, and searches for and selects a plurality of open application interfaces (APIs) to be used to produce the designed mash-up. The mash-up developer analyzes a map open API of Daum and an open API of Naver, and checks characteristics of the respective open API services, namely, blocks. Here, the characteristics of the blocks may be, for example, a communication protocol (a code), a data format, and a type of input/output data.
That is, a mash-up authoring apparatus places or arranges open APIs, namely, blocks, and connects inputs and outputs of the respective blocks using a data format of the input and output of each of the blocks. Also, the mash-up authoring apparatus specifies scripts or codes.
Recently, demand and supply for lots of smartphones, tablet personal computers (PCs), etc. are increasing, and a manipulation scheme of mobile equipment is becoming diversified in proportion to the demand and supply. Also, recently, due to the spread of smart devices and the generalization of open services (open APIs), users require various additional services.
However, a current service merely provides simple voice recognition and a unilateral response, namely, a secretary-type response, and cannot use a multimedia service function that is a characteristic of smart equipment. For this reason, the current service cannot be customized and provided to a user. Such a problem occurs because there are no method and apparatus that combine open APIs to automatically generate a new mash-up service.
In other words, a general mash-up service generation apparatus generates a mash-up service using a difficult programming that requires the use of a keyboard and a mouse, without using the newest function such as voice recognition.
The general mash-up service generation apparatus is difficult to be implemented in an environment in which a resource is limited, and has a problem that general users lacking programming knowledge cannot conveniently generate a general mash-up service.